CloviTek$104,626
Start-Up Costs (2015–2017, capitalized at incorporation)
This is the full picture, not a single chapter. The first company — CloviFi / CLOVITEK, INC., a Delaware C-corp and CES 2018 Innovation Award Honoree — has a documented ~$175K of build spend on its filed Form 1120 returns, founder-funded throughout (the filed 2019 1120 capitalized a $162,177 contributed-capital basis), then dissolved in 2022 when funding ran out. The current studio rebuilt lean on ~$70K. Every figure carries its provenance tag and ties to a receipt or filed return. Honesty is the feature. Approximately two hundred forty-five thousand US dollars total across two eras: about one hundred seventy-five thousand documented in the CloviFi corporate era and about seventy thousand in the current studio era. Mixed provenance.
~$245K of founder investment over a decade, broken honestly into the two distinct eras. These are separate companies with separate ledgers — shown side by side, never conflated into one blended number.
Smart-audio hardware startup, CES 2018 Innovation Award Honoree. Documented corporate build spend on filed Form 1120 returns, founder-funded throughout ($162,177 contributed-capital basis on the filed 2019 1120). Applied for COVID-19 EIDL disaster relief in 2021 (application only — no loan approved or received); self-funded to dissolution, paying Delaware franchise tax and wind-down costs out of pocket in 2022 with no outside debt. Ran out of funding and was formally dissolved in Delaware on 2022-09-04 — not a bankruptcy.
The comeback: an AI-agent studio bootstrapped personally on ~$70K — 179 AppSumo lifetime deals to learn the craft, then heavy AI API spend to build the fleet. A whole portfolio for the price the first company spent on patent attorneys alone.
Combined: ~$245K across two companies. The two eras are kept separate on purpose — the ~$175K is documented corporate spend on filed returns (the strongest provenance tier), the ~$70K is the current studio's personal bootstrapping. We do not add the CloviFi vendor invoices on top of its capitalized basis (that would double-count) — see the methodology below.
The first company's spend isn't an estimate — it's filed with the IRS. The 2019 corporate return capitalized the cumulative CloviFi build as four depreciable assets: a $162,177 cost basis, the cleanest defensible measure of real money spent building the product. With cash operating costs not capitalized, Delaware franchise tax, and dissolution, documented cumulative spend lands at ~$175K (range $165K–$185K).
| Item | Amount (USD) | Provenance | Source / detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capitalized asset basis (Start-Up + Software + Hardware + Intangibles) | $162,177 | Documented | 2019 Form 1120 depreciation detail |
| ↳ of which Diffco development (33 invoices @ $50/hr) | $64,931 | Documented | Vendor invoices; folded into basis — not additive |
| ↳ of which Chetu offshore development (@ $25/hr) | ~$47,000 | Documented | Master Agreement 2018-11-15; folded into basis — not additive |
| ↳ of which patent attorneys (IP, undelivered) | ~$40,000 | Documented | Capitalized into Start-Up Costs — not additive |
| ↳ Maglioli consultant | $150 | Documented | Folded into basis — not additive |
| + Incremental cash operating spend not capitalized (2019–2020) | ~$15K–$35K | Documented | 2019/2020 corporate returns, other deductions |
| + Delaware franchise tax (FY2020 + FY2021) | ~$1,413 | Documented | Government receipts |
| + Dissolution / wind-down (2022) | ~$200–$700 | Partial | Notice of Business Dissolution filed 2022-09-04 |
| Documented cumulative CloviFi spend | ~$175,000 (range $165K–$185K) | Documented | Anchored on the filed $162,177 basis |
No double-counting. The Diffco invoices, Chetu dev, patent/legal and hardware spend are largely the same dollars already inside the $162,177 capitalized basis (then written off via depreciation/amortization). They're listed for detail, not summed on top. The $162,177 basis is the single cleanest measure of cumulative build spend — and it's filed with the IRS.
The current company's personal bootstrapping — four buckets, color-coded by provenance. Flip the switch to hide everything that's only estimated — and see exactly how much is hard, receipt-backed MEASURED money. A skeptic should be able to argue with this page.
| Bucket | Amount (USD) | Provenance | Source / detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| AppSumo LTDs (179 deals, 2023–26) | $32,509 | Measured-derived | Plus dashboard: 179 deals, $3,623.22 saved → gross ≈$36,232 → paid ≈$32,509 |
| Anthropic API (201 receipts, 2026) | ~$30,000 | Estimated | 201 receipts; sampled $215.30; range $20K–$40K — pin via CT-087 crawler |
| Other SaaS / hosting | ~$4,500 | Partial | DataForSEO $53.82 measured; Contabo, Manus, Jamy run-rate |
| Founder SaaS / misc tooling (2023–26) | ~$3,000 | Estimated | Studio-era SaaS not yet itemized; records pending |
| Total | ~$70,009 (≈$70K midpoint, range $60–80K) | Mixed | MEASURED-only floor = $37,009 |
The founder's own money across two companies: first ~$175K building a CES-honored hardware startup on filed corporate returns, then a lean studio rebuild — learning the AI craft one lifetime deal at a time and building the CloviTek fleet on heavy API spend.
CLOVITEK, INC., a Delaware C-corp and CES 2018 Innovation Honoree. ~$175K documented on filed Form 1120 returns ($162,177 contributed-capital basis), founder-funded throughout; a 2021 COVID-19 EIDL application only (no loan approved or received). Self-funded to dissolution in 2022 when funding ran out — not a bankruptcy.
Bought 179 lifetime-deal tools to learn the space before building. The single largest bucket — and the raw material the studio later composes from. Plus member since 2023.
Heavy AI API spend building the fleet — 201 Anthropic receipts in 2026 alone, with cadence accelerating (≈30 receipts in the first two weeks of June).
The same founder built CloviTek's financial model twice, nine years apart. In 2017 it took weeks, paid tools, and a CPA. In 2026, agents built a richer, provenance-backed model in hours — and turned the capability into a product.
Each line was a real bill. Each is now an owned Clovi* product or agent at ~$0 marginal cost. This is the headline differentiator: I can do it all now with my agents.
Honesty tags: the CPA and Startups.co/LivePlan costs are founder-stated / measured. The Legal and Accounting line-items are still pending extraction from the filed CloviTek/Vital Webmaster P&Ls — tagged accordingly, not asserted. "~$0" means marginal cost on owned infrastructure.
From Vital Webmaster LLC's filed books (cash basis, full-year 2025) — accounting-grade, the authoritative source that beats any estimate. The LLC ran at a loss while the founder funded the tooling personally. That's not a red flag. That's proof of conviction, on the record.
| Total income | $430.76 |
|---|---|
| Computer & Internet expenses | $7,064.67 |
| Dues & Subscriptions | $6,777.98 |
| Interest | $1,287.00 |
| Bank & service charges | $835.00 |
| Meals | $329.96 |
| Outside services | $245.92 |
| Licenses | $18.00 |
| Total expenses | $15,271.53 |
| Net income (loss) | −$15,819.56 |
The 179-deal fleet isn't sunk cost — it's the owned raw material the studio composes the Clovi* products from. Lifetime deals are paid once; SaaS bleeds monthly. Buying the toolchain outright is the bootstrapping edge.
Plus member since 2023 (renews Aug 28 2026). Measured-derived
$3,623.22 saved via the 10% Plus discount alone.
$3,623.22 saved ÷ ~$289 Plus cost ≈ 12.5×15 Select tools, last 12 months — downside-insured purchases.
Every platform's source tree, harvested: lines of code, build window, and a modeled one-time build cost. The rollup is the punchline — a whole portfolio for the price of a few lunches. Sort and filter; each card is a mini-timeline.
One person, own money, no team — turning a decade of tooling into a connected fleet. The short version, visualized.
This page is a presentation layer over a canonical, provenance-tagged ledger. It invents nothing. Here's how every figure is sourced — and how it gets stronger over time.
MEASURED = tied to a real receipt or filed ledger entry (AppSumo dashboard, the 2025 LLC P&L, DataForSEO Paddle receipt). ESTIMATED = modeled from a count + a sampled rate, clearly labeled, pending full extraction (CT-087 crawler). PARTIAL = some receipts in hand, run-rate for the rest.
Gmail only captures payments that email a receipt. Card-direct charges (most Manus, possibly more) leave no email — so the American Express statement is the complete, bank-grade ledger. When the Amex 2023–2026 CSV lands, it becomes the primary MEASURED feed and the total moves up, not down. The estimate is a floor, expandable to source.
Each line ties to a Gmail receipt ID or ledger entry. The crawler opens each receipt, extracts {vendor, amount, date, cadence}, and writes a signed ledger. The investor view shows the count, sampled receipts, and total — each figure expandable to its source. No invented figures, ever.
The Amex CSV converts the ~$30K Anthropic estimate to measured and surfaces card-direct charges. The full 179-line AppSumo export itemizes the fleet. The 2024 (and 2023) LLC P&Ls complete the multi-year software-spend history. Every one of these only makes the page more provable.
Questions about these numbers or how they were sourced? The founder answers personally — no bot theater here.
Email the founder directly Read the investor thesis Watch the factory runA live conversational agent (CloviTek context) is on the roadmap — we won't ship a dead button that pretends to be live.